NapLab

Mat • 00:00

Why pay for drugs when you can-

Derek • 00:02

… take my ruler and I measure it, and I say, “Well, this is actually only 12 inches.”

Mat • 00:06

Actually recording the intro right now, Derek. Could we hold off on the measuring?

Derek • 00:09

Okay, sounds good.

Mat • 00:10

Okay, great. Why pay for drugs when you can get the hallucinations and the altered emotional state for free? All you need to do is stop sleeping. As a basic need, sleep is right up there in probably third place behind the smug pair of food and water, who, to be fair, do have a pretty strong lock on the top two spots on the staying alive podium.

The Bee Gees

Ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive.

Mat

Getting a good sleep has been an obsession of our species since before we even were a species, at least as far back as our Australopithecan ancestors and their curved toes and fingers to hold onto that DoubleTree that they chose for the night. Sleep matters, and therefore, what we sleep on matters too, and that means mattresses in one form or another. You’re gonna be using your mattress for thousands of hours. If you make the wrong choice, you’ll have plenty of time to regret it as you lie there awake and desperately uncomfortable in those dark and emotionally fraught early morning hours. So how do you choose the right mattress? How did you choose the one that you already have? Today, we’re gonna hear from a man who has seen more mattresses than a bedbug in a backpackers, Derek Hales from mattress review website, NapLab. It’s The Supportive.

Derek • 01:20

So my name is Derek Hales. I’m the founder and editor-in-chief of NapLab. NapLab is a platform where we test and review mattresses. So mattresses come in, we conduct a battery of objective and data-driven testing, collecting information, rating, scoring the mattresses. We compile all that into the most, sort of deeply interesting, transparent, hopefully helpful review possible.

Mat • 01:45

I wanted to talk to Derek because, for NapLab, customer service is not just replying to emails, although, of course, they do plenty of that. But the vast majority of Derek’s customers, the people who will read those reviews, watch the videos, compare the scores, buy the mattresses, they will never contact NapLab at all. They don’t need to because the review is the service being provided. They arrive, they browse, they leave, like a voracious horde of cruise ship passengers in an economically fragile tropical port town. But we’ll get to all that. Let’s get to know Derek first. You have said before that you were one of the kids that was always working on side hustles and things.

Derek • 02:25

Yeah.

Mat • 02:26

What- what was your best one?

Derek • 02:28

I think probably the most interesting one was probably the mother of my nanny taught me to crochet at a very young age. So by the time I was, I don’t know, five or six, I was a pretty, like, good crocheter, if that- that’s the- the proper word for it. And so I would go to Hobby Lobby and get yarn and then crochet, you know, little, coasters and pot holders and stuff, and then I would sell those in the neighborhood. and so, you know, five, six years old, you know, not a ton of money, but, you know, I did make, you know, 20, 30 bucks selling a big old batch of pot holders and stuff. So I think that was always fun. I lo- I lo- I always look back on my crocheting era fondly.

Mat • 03:11

When I was five, the most productive thing I did was mining for boogers. But if you’ve heard the Help Scout episode of this series, you’ll know that our chairman and former CEO, Nick Francis, he was another of these child business owners. I think these entrepreneurs are just built different. But Derek is also a self-professed nerd, and I had heard that he was big into Lord of the Rings, so I asked the obvious question. What mattress would Bilbo Baggins buy? He did not let me down.

Derek • 03:40

Well, it’s gotta be, you know, small ’cause it’s gotta fit at- in Bag End, so that’s gonna be a tough one. But, you know, what- what would be The Hobbit, the perfect Hobbit mattress? I mean, it’s gotta be some sort of, featherbed, right? They mentioned- mention featherbeds when they’re at Bree, or- or rather when they’re on the road between Bag End and Bree. So something, probably, like, a baseline of some sort of, you know, straw or- or down, but, it’s gotta be a- a huge featherbed topper, I’d say.

Mat • 04:07

I did think about mentioning at this point that canonically Smaug the Dragon sleeps on a pile of gold to see if NapLab would review that option. but I decided to move on, and you can thank me for that. Derek’s journey into mattress reviewing started with solving his own problem, which is a path common to many of our subjects this season.

Derek • 04:26

Certainly by accident, at least in my case, you know? the- the, my sort of journey into the world of mattresses started, when I got married. My wife and I got married in 2014. for the first few months of our marriage, we were sleeping on my old full mattress from high school. And so we were in the market pretty quickly looking for something a little bit bigger, a little bit, newer. and so we kinda did the whole in-store experience. We went in, we tried beds, we lied on ’em, we found ones we liked. but they were very expensive, you know, 4, 5, 6000 dollars. We were a young married couple, not a whole lot of money to speak of and- and pretty frugal people, even if we- we had that kind of money just sitting around. just couldn’t pull the trigger. So we ended up trying, um, an online bed. It was a king-sized mattress for 600 bucks online. We ordered it. It was not great, but it had a great return policy, so we returned it, we tried something else, we ordered another online bed. It was a little bit better, and something we could sleep on. So really just kinda like a, as a kind of fun weekend hobby project for myself, I like building stuff and especially websites, so I was like, “You know, I’m just gonna build a website, some reviews, throw it up there.” I reviewed each of the beds that I had tried, I compared them. I had some, like, notes about, like, what my experience was like, sh- going into the stores, what it was like with these mattresses for the first few days. Threw it up on the website just to see, you know, if anybody would care. Um, not really expecting it to blow any up, but, it- it- it, yeah, it just blew up within just a few weeks. We had a substantial amount of traffic, quickly growing. People asked me to review other things. We- we kept testing, kept reviewing more mattresses, and, within six months of launching the site, I was able to, to leave my full-time job and start my career as a professional mattress tester.

Mat • 06:07

That probably didn’t come up at a careers day at high school?

Derek • 06:10

No, no, it was, was not high up there at all.

Mat • 06:13

If your careers teacher ever does say that you should be a mattress tester, probably just start taking notes. There will be a court case. But that first review site, Sleepopolis, it was a hit, rising on the king-sized tide of online mattress retailers. But I don’t need to tell you about them. If you have listened to literally any podcast, you will have heard their ads. And speaking of sleep and ads, I did try to get the Calm Wellness app to sponsor this episode. In fact, I thought I had locked them in, but then it turned out to be … Well, I’ve signed the contract, so I have to play this. You’ll see. _ …the waves. Now, really visualize all the good nutrients filtering in and letting go of all the muck, releasing it back into the ocean, all your worries and concerns floating away on the East Australia current. You are as happy as a clam because you are a clam. _ Now, if you’re an eagle eye … eagle-eared listener? Do eagles even have good hearing? Uh. Apparently, it’s just fine. Greater wax moths have the best animal hearing. I- if you’re a moth-eared listener, you will realize that this episode is about a mattress review site called NapLab, not Sleepopolis, which is the first site Derek was talking about. So what’s the deal with that? Well, the short version is that an online mattress reseller, the spookiest one, had some feelings about Derek’s site, took him to court. It was a big deal. And Derek is not legally allowed to talk about it. You can read some excellent journalism about the whole saga. I’ll put a link in the show notes. But it turns out the mattress industry is a little bit more cartel-like than you would think. That is my opinion, to be clear. In any case, after a bit of an industry hiatus, Derek returned to mattress reviews with naplab.com. I specifically asked him about a common sales ploy, taking advantage of information asymmetry, where the salesperson knows tons more about the product than the typical consumer does. In the age of the internet, it is harder for industries to hide that information away, but they do still have some tricks up their high thread count sleeves

Derek • 08:39

I mean, we had such a negative experience going into the mattress store, where I just felt like I was being misled, sold something, not given the full picture, sort of, like you say, that information asymmetry. The salesman knows everything, um, and he’s … but he’s not telling me everything. He’s telling me the things that he thinks that I want to hear in order to push me over, over that line. Um, and I’ve had, you know, similar experiences in other stores. You know, if you’re, you know, shopping for a car is another really terrible experience. I absolutely hate going to the dealership, to do the sort of, whole negotiation. Um, where … but I compare that to other areas. I’m a huge computer nerd. I like building computers. I’ve been building computers since I was, you know, 12 years old. and there, I can get every piece of granular information and data and spec information I could ever want to. So that’s sort of what I want. And the fact that it didn’t exist for mattresses bothered me, because that’s what I wanted there too. And so the information is out there, right? The mattress companies that make these, these brands, know the gauge of the coil. They know the type of steel. They know the type of foam. They know the exact formula. They know the density of that foam. And yet they choose not to share that information. And I think that’s just wrong. Like, consumers should have access to know exactly what is in the products that they’re purchasing so that they can make more informed decisions.

Mat • 10:01

That gap between what the manufacturers know and what the consumers know is what sites like NapLab aim to fill. The smaller the gap left, the less trust is required from the customer. Less trust, but never zero trust. Any sort of transaction still requires some degree of trust. Will the company and their products deliver on the promises that their marketing makes? What happens if something goes wrong? Is it safe? Is it real? And of course, you can ask the exact same questions of any company that’s trying to fill a trust gap. NapLab is not immune from questions of trust itself. We’ve all seen suspiciously glowing reviews of products that infect Amazon and the like. And Derek put it this way.

Derek • 10:42

I think the sort of product review industry at large has earned the level of distrust that it now enjoys. And so you really have to go out of your way to earn the trust of your, of your viewers and your readers.

Mat • 10:55

Any review is only good if you can believe that it’s real, and that’s a challenge. People don’t generally pay to read reviews, so they have to be funded some way. Affiliate links are a really common method. Someone clicks through from a review to purchase a product, the review site earns a commission, and that can really add up. A 2022 estimate suggested that the New York Times product review website, Wirecutter, brought in about $6 million a month purely through affiliate links. Affiliate incomes, it’s not a secret. Companies are required to state clearly when they’re using affiliate links. And Derek aims to be as open and transparent as possible and to give his readers every reason to trust NapLab reviews.

Derek • 11:38

I think that is critical to, to this whole, to this whole world, because again, I think product reviews in general have earned a lot of distrust because of the various forms of, you know, incentivization and monetization and things that sort of make the review less than honest. and so we try to, again, be just as transparent as possible, explain, “Here’s how we do it. Here’s how we make money. Here’s why we do it this way. Here’s why we think this is the best way. And here, and here’s the, the links that we have and the links that we don’t have.” Um, while it’s not a perfect system, I think it is sort of the-… best form of monetization that we can to provide the level of testing at our scale while also sort of minimizing undue outside influences. So we have the ability to be in referral affiliate programs for essentially every mattress, brand, and company available, and we are in all those companies. And that gives us a lot of flexibility to just always recommend whatever is best. We’re, we’re not sort of stuck only recommending a limited number of brands because those are the ones that have referral programs. You know, we can basically test and review anybody.

Mat • 12:53

For some people, any sort of affiliate payment means that a review is fatally compromised and can no longer be considered objective. No amount of disclosure would be enough. I think that is a reasonable position to take.

Derek • 13:06

Yeah. I, I think there are people like that. Um, and I think I guess, I think, you know, Reddit is a place where you see a lot of those, those types where there is n- nothing that anybody has been incentivized with in any way can ever be honest. Um, and I can understand to a certain level why, you know, some people view that way. Again, I think we, we, again, we go out of our way to collect as, as, as much data and provide as much sort of evidence for our, our viewpoints and our scores and our recommendations, um, and let people decide if that’s enough. For some people, you’re right, it’s just never gonna be enough. And, and for others, I think there is that balance where they can trust what we’re saying while also understanding that, you know, the referral link is what keeps this company in business.

Mat • 13:57

And it is large-scale. Derek and the team have tested over 380 mattresses, enough to form a thriving colony on Sqornshellous Zeta. Hit me up, Hitchhiker’s fans. After testing all those mattresses, Derek is well aware of the industry tricks that erode customer trust.

Derek • 14:13

One brand will make a SKU and sell it in retailer A, and then they have a different SKU sold in retailer B.

Mat • 14:23

A SKU is a stock keeping unit, basically a code that refers to one specific product. So by giving essentially the same product with very minor changes, two different SKUs, they can be sold with different names and different labels.

Derek • 14:35

Well, retailer B is like a higher-end department store, and retailer A is a wholesale warehouse. And so they will tune the products slightly. Sometimes that tuning could just be a different aesthetic cover. Sometimes maybe it has a pillow top, and this one doesn’t. Sometimes the layer is different. Sometimes it has a base layer of two inches of foam on the bottom, but otherwise, the mattresses are identical ’cause that extra height makes it look more luxurious, and the department store knows it can sell it for a higher price. So we do see a good amount of that going on in the world of mattresses. And even for somebody like myself that’s, I would say, kind of in the know of what’s going on, it can be really hard to know where there are differences unless I get both and cut them open and look at them. Because you have this sort of, very similar SKUs, you know, sold at different retailers at different price points sort of issue going on, but then you also have just kind of a mismatch of product information versus what the mattress actually is. And this is a lot more widespread than it should be, where a product page will say, “This is a 14-inch mattress with three inches of memory foam.” I get the mattress and take my ruler, and I measure it, and I say, “Well, this is actually only 12 inches, and this memory foam layer is actually only an inch and a half, and this other layer also was not as, as tall.” So you s- you see a lot of that, um, and it’s really disheartening, kind of the, the scale of it, because it’s stuff that’s, like, really simple, and even for just sort of regular consumers to just verify if they buy a 14-inch mattress, they should expect to get a 14-inch thick mattress. And when they don’t, being able to ask “Why?” is, is a very reasonable question and one that I think they’re, they’re right to be sort of aggravated that they are having to, sort of, ask that question at all. Um, buying the thing that you think you’ve purchased should, should be a given. And too often, at least in the world of mattresses, it’s not

Mat • 16:29

All of these things make it harder for someone who just wants a good sleep to know which product they should buy. A mattress is a big purchase. It’s costly to replace, and that’s why so many people are willing to read mattress reviews to build their confidence. And that is why for NapLab each individual review really is their core service. If you haven’t already seen one, go check out naplab.com now. Read or watch a mattress review. They’re serious chunks of work. I have now read more about a mattress that I will never own than I ever did about any of the cars that I’ve bought, although the cars were all secondhand. And when it comes to mattresses, I’m more of a factory fresh guy. Each mattress is scored on eight factors and then rated on two others, and you can follow the link in the show notes to get the full explanation. But includes rating for the company itself, for off-gassing, edge support, pressure relief, sex. Derek explained his deliberate focus on including as much objective testing as possible.

Derek • 17:29

The last 11 years, everything I’ve done, all the experiences I’ve had, the, the challenges that have been brought to us, um, and, yeah, I would say everything that we’ve done is, is the product of where, where we are today. And, while we’ve always had, you know, some level of testing and objectivity in our reviews, they are, beginning in 2021, moved to almost purely objective, um, because we wanted to really insulate ourselves as, as much as possible, um, one, to, like, remove as much bias as possible. I don’t think you can ever be totally unbiased. I think any person o- on this planet has, has taken in information and ideas and opinions, and you just, you can’t be ever fully unbiased. But we try to develop a, a testing protocol and process that just collects and measures information and data about the mattresses. And those data points go into a spreadsheet, and that spreadsheet tells me a score, and that score tells me how this thing compares and all of the information that tells me how I am supposed to talk about this. Not because it’s my opinion that this thing has great cooling rates, not in my opinion that it’s just great pressure. It’s because the data and the materials and all of our objective measurements have informed that- that viewpoint. Um, some of those things are still subjective. And we always call those out and explain when we are- when we have a subjective moment. But as much as we can, I want our reviews to be based on data and based on objective assessment, because I think those reviews, one, I think are- they have a better level of trust. People can see the data and understand how we arrived at a conclusion, as opposed to just a subjective opinion being shared. and two, I think they just stand up to criticism better than purely subjective reviews, which is also a big piece of what we do.

Mat • 19:23

Every mattress review is presented in video as well as in text. It’s another way to make the information accessible when people need it. And Derek is well aware that every site visit really counts for his business.

Derek • 19:35

Given sort of the life cycle of a mattress, it’s really hard, right? You- you buy a mattress. A good quality mattress should last ten years. Um, now you may buy other mattresses before the ten years, you know, for kids, or for guest rooms, or for- for family members, that sort of thing. So we- I do think the- the- the cycle between purchases is- is shorter, probably something more like five years. but that’s still- that’s a long- that’s a long period of time between purchases. So, in my mind, we have to absolutely crush it, knock the experience out of the park for the- the visitor on the very first time they come to the website. Because if they don’t come, have an amazing experience, find everything they want, and- a- as fast as they can, and it’s simple, and it’s easy, and they end up with a mattress that they absolutely love, like, we’ve- we’ve failed, and we’ve lost them forever. If we can deliver on, you know, sort of the- the highest ideals of- of the website, of NapLab, then we have somebody that- that will remember us. So, when they are ready to make that, you know, follow-up purchase in five years or ten years, we’re there, so that when, you know, their friends or family are talking about mattresses at Thanksgiving, they’ve had such an astoundingly good experience on the website that they remember and that they’re willing to talk about us and share that- share that. So, I have always really just been focused on just building the ultimate, over-the-top experience, not on the website as a whole, but, like, the review is just so in depth and focused, but also digestible, and easy to understand, and easy to com- compare, because I think it’s just so critical that we make a good impression to- to readers the very first time they come. So yeah, everything sort of, you know, starts with the review. We do a test. We do a review based on that test. We have a standalone review. And then we’ll use that review to, like, power our tool so they can side-by-side compare, to power our best of list so that we can say, “These are the ten best mattresses for this category based on this criteria,” or if we’re doing our deep dive comparisons, or if we’re providing, you know, personalized one-on-one email support. All of those kind of go back to that original review, that original data set that tells us everything that we need to know about that mattress.

Mat • 21:43

And you’ve got your mattress finding quiz. Are you doing that still manually, or is there automation involved?

Derek • 21:50

Manually-ish. So, um, whenever someone goes to our website, they fill out the quiz. They answer a few questions about needs, preferences, and budget. That goes straight back to me. and basically we ingest that into a massive, Google Sheet that has all of our data in it. And so then we’re looking at, okay, they’ve said these are all their preferences, and how does that line up to everything we know about every mattress that we’ve tested? What are the best performers? Which mattress is going to deliver on the things that this individual needs. Like, what is their best mattress? And that’s really how I think about, sort of, mattresses. I don’t think there is a single best mattress for everybody. There is just a best mattress for you, a best mattress for me, and we try to analyze all of our data to find that single best mattress. And that does it, sort of, all programmatically. And then we go in. We double check. We manually confirm. Okay, this is good, good, good. Correct. And then we send that off, so they have their personalized recommendation back within 24 hours.

Mat • 22:49

Is it easy to hit that 24 hours still?

Derek • 22:51

We’re doing it, but it’s- it’s not- it’s not easy. So, it- it was, just myself sort of solo on the, sort of email support for about, four years. within the last several months, I’ve got, two of my, team members and employees trained up, so they are now helping me with that process. So, between us, we can get those back out without anybody sort of, you know, losing their mind. And we’re always sort of, you know, on schedule, and we have, you know, a few of us to balance the load.

Mat • 23:19

Most founders, and I suspect especially the child entrepreneur types who build global logistic companies in their nappies, or diapers, often find it hard to let go of controlling everything as their companies grow. And Derek was no different.

Derek • 23:35

We- we reached a point where we were so backed up in the videos because of me, um, that I was just like, “What- what are we doing here?” Like, there are a million other things that need my attention. Yes, this may not be to my perfect level, but it’s 95% of the way there, that- that the things that I would call out are things that not most people are gonna really care about. Um, and so I just had to let go. And I’ve unfortunately had to learn that lesson basically at every single sort of channel. II can’t seem to really learn this lesson. But, um, maybe this is the year I finally, can- can get it figured out. But yeah, just, letting go of the control, and- and trusting, the team that I’ve built, to do their jobs to the standard of excellence that we’ve all committed to.

Mat • 24:22

Part of that letting go is making sure new people understand what matters most. And for Derek, that meant having new team members lie in the bed that he made. Metaphorically. Also, a bit literally.

Derek • 24:35

You just kinda have to, like, immerse yourself in the world of NapLab by, by reading our stuff or watching our stuff, by being involved in the testing to really sort of get it because that’s, that’s the only way I really know how, how to learn because that’s, that’s how w- how I learned myself. And so, as we’ve expanded the team, um, we’ve been fortunate in that we’ve been able to sort of do it in a sort of very sort of slow growth method. You know, we didn’t have to, like, hire all at once. So, that was been helpful. Um, and so as I bring a new person in, they’re able to get lots of attention from myself and the existing team to, to, to sort of bring them up to speed. As we built out sort of the testing team, it really required us to get really specific on the testing processes and protocols. Things that were very obvious to me because I had been doing them, um, weren’t so obvious when I trained somebody. And then it was like a game of telephone. Now, he’s training somebody else, um, to do the thing that I trained him, but doing it a little bit differently. And so by the time we brought on our second tester, we basically had had a, a big sort of regroup. Like, all right, ’cause we were, we’re coming together. We sort of memorialized, in sort of written exacting form exactly how we’re testing, why we do this, how we do this, so that whether it’s myself or one of my two teammates, we’re all testing exactly the same way every single time. That there are no mistakes, that there are no variances in, in our testing protocols because again, if, if we can’t trust the data, then nothing else we do can be trusted. But in the past, it was just sort of, just sort of, you know, verbal vomiting, to, to my, you know, team members. Like, “Oh, let’s do this and this.” And it was slowly getting there. But in, in retrospect, if I had just written out precisely, here is what I need you to do in this exact order every time, and then as I’m providing feedback, also write that, and then basically modify a living document. I think that would have gone a lot better for everybody. because then not only am I training that person, but invariably, when we need another person to help out in that particular area, they have the training documents ready to go and we can easily, you know, get them up to speed.

Mat • 26:40

All right. Press pause right now. Write yourself a list of things I have to do because nobody else knows how. I bet there are things on there that other people on your team would be excited to learn. Let them do it. I asked Derek if he felt that delegating work to other people had also improved the quality of the reviews.

Derek • 27:00

That’s a good question. I’m trying to think. Certainly, one of the biggest just sort of, um, content changes, if you will, is like our long-form videos that we do. And so originally, we did all of those, those in-house. So, I edited the earliest videos. I am an okay editor. I have a, a vision for what want- what needs to be done. And I know when I see it good, but I am not, like, tactically an, like, a great editor. Um, and two of the earlier employees I hired, they were kind of also kind of same thing. Could identify a good video, not great editors. So, we ended up sort of offshoring that, to the Philippines where we work with two fantastic editors that just do incredible work. And they are just true, just masters of their craft. They produce just higher quality videos than anything we had produced here. And so again, just sort of getting out of my own way and I was like, I just told them, I was like, “Listen, here’s what we wanna produce. Um, here are the assets that I think will be helpful. I’m not gonna give you any more information. Go make the best video that you can make, and then let’s see it.” And we ended up with just a, a much better product and we’ve sort of, modified and evolved, our, our videos over time, but I think they’re, they’re better than ever.

Mat • 28:10

Getting out of your own way, that could be a whole podcast in itself. I mean, it probably is. But no matter how good your products and services become, there will always be moments when they fail or where they just don’t do what your customers need them to do. Derek doesn’t sell actual mattresses, not directly, but people watch his videos, they read his reviews, they drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on the products that he recommends. The stakes are high. Derek hears from people who love their new mattresses, but also the people who very much do not.

Derek • 28:42

You know, we have people that will reach out ’cause they’ve had a bad experience. They, they purchased something that we recommended and their experience didn’t match what we said in the review. And, you know, I do my best to help those people just, just like anybody else. And so try to understand, okay, well, why didn’t they have a good experience? Was our review wrong? Was the mattress they re- received defective? Do they have some sort of mitigating circumstance in terms of preferences or body type that could be making this worse or different than what I, I experienced? and basically just try to understand sort of a, a fuller picture so that we can then say, “Okay. Well, based on what you’ve experienced, I think that we need to do this.” And sometimes what they need to do is wait. Um, a lot of times, I’ll get people that email me within, you know, 24 hours. They got a brand-new mattress, hate it, email just light me up on the email. I say, “Okay. It’s only one day. It takes the body, you know, three to four weeks to adjust to a mattress.” And it takes that mattress three to four weeks to break in. It’s the, the number of people that I’ve had sort of reach out furious in the first week and I get them to wait, and then by week four, they love the bed. It is tremendous. So, that happens all the time.

Mat • 29:51

And if you, like me, have worked in software, you will know any sort of change can be terribly disruptive to people’s workflow, no matter how well-designed or how carefully rolled out. And every parent knows how hard it is to be rational and calm if you’re just not sleeping well. There’s something quite appealing about being able to tell a customer who is terribly upset by a new mattress that the solution to their problem is sleep on it and how often that works. Often, but not always.

Derek • 30:21

If they’ve been on it a few weeks and it’s still not great, like, let’s, let’s understand why. And then, while this mattress wasn’t the best mattress for you, let’s, let’s find the one that is. And so…We’re looking at, looking at firmness and body type and sleeping position, and all these different factors that make a mattress better or worse with, with respect to how it feels and how it supports the body, and ultimately just trying, trying to tune in at least the, the bad experience they have and tune that in and turn it into something that’s positive and get them onto a bed that meets their needs.

Mat • 30:49

Though there is at least one potential customer Derek may never convince to pull the trigger on a purchase.

Derek • 30:55

And the, the one that always comes to my mind is my, my own father’s house. His house just… this awful, awful full-sized mattress that’s, like, 20 years old. I have begged him to replace it. I think until I physically order and send a mattress to his house that bed will not get replaced.

Mat • 31:10

Yeah, well, look, I love my dad, but I am not getting into a discussion of the sex ratings of various mattresses with him. So, I applaud Derek on his attempt at mattress evangelism. Godspeed to you, Derek. In essence, NapLab is providing free after-sale support for a product that they neither make nor sell, which is impressive. Just as in any service business, though, not every problem can be fully recovered. Plenty can be, and the effort will pay off long-term. The mattress companies, of course, should be doing this themselves, and no doubt many are. But the industry as a whole remains fairly opaque to consumers. I wondered if NapLab considered themselves as consumer advocates as well as third-party reviewers.

Derek • 31:53

I, I think at some level, yes. Um, you know, we test… The, the way in which we test review mattresses sort of takes the sort of the marketing speak, the sort of veneer off of the mattress. Um, if you go to a mattress product page you’ll see, you know, all kinds of language around, “Oh, this cool Ice Tech fabric,” and, “Oh, it’s titanium, gel insert,” and all these other things that sound, like, so fancy and so sophisticated and so cool. And we get that down, I’m just like, “Nope, that’s polyfoam, that’s polyfoam, that’s polyfoam, that’s a polyester cover.”

Mat • 32:26

It sounds like Where’s Waldo in the mattress store.

Derek • 32:28

Here in the United States, we have t- tags on mattresses that say, you know, what’s in the mattress, what it’s made of, whether it’s polyurethane foam, innerspring, viscoelastic, polyfoam, latex, and so forth. And so, it’s always really interesting to see what the tag says versus what all their marketing speak says. You would think with sort of how widespread sort of, you know, consume- consumer advocacy groups and watchdogs have become, that there would be somebody with a more stringent eye. And so, may- maybe that’s something NapLab can, you know, step more, into, as we grow a little bit. we do a little bit of that right now, again, I think just sort of a byproduct of, like, the nature of our tests. But, I think it’s an area that’s, that’s desperately needed as well.

Marketing puffery is not going away in the world of mattresses. I think it is as widespread, as ever. Um, I think you, you sort of seeing- see the language sort of, evolve, you know, as consumer interest and just sort of, like, awareness becomes different. Like, memory foam was very sort of widespread and understood to be a good thing for many years. But it’s sort of gotten a bit of a bad rap in certain circles, where people understand it now as, as a, as a warmer foam, as a foam that’s harder to move around on, and some of these, like, negative connotations. So, you’ll see some brands’ intention is to kind of, like, move away from it. They, they won’t want to say the word memory foam even if the foam does have the properties that are more like memory foam, because they don’t want to associate their product with those negative connotations.

Mat • 33:52

Yeah, I mean, I don’t need my bed to have any sort of memory. I want whatever the opposite is of memory foam, amnesia foam.

Derek • 33:59

Um, we see a lot of that as well with, more, more natural materials as well, where, again, brands wanna be associated with all of the nice things about natural and organic products. Even when they necessarily aren’t the most natural or organic, they can, you know, put an organic cotton cover on there and then prominently discuss the “organic features” which are limited to just the cover. So, we make a point to kind of always discuss the material layers. I cut open every mattress we look at and I look at the layers, and I will sort of give my view on what that layer is. And sometimes my perspective is different from what a mattress brand will say about themselves.

Memory foam is a really good example of this, because memory foam has no legal definition. Today, there are many products described as memory foam that are polyurethane foam. And so on the law tag, they are labeled polyurethane foam, and yet they may feel like memory foam. And so I sort of… I use my own definition for memory foam, since the industry doesn’t have one that they agree on. So, I look at those foams, I, I do my tests on them, and then I say, “Okay, this is a poly foam, this is a memory foam,” to try to, again, just kind of take that marketing veneer off there so that we can just talk about, like, what is important to consumers, which is how the foam feels.

Mat • 35:16

When you go to bed tonight, you will probably be suddenly aware of how your mattress feels. Sorry about that. What really grabbed me about NapLab’s story is the idea of proactive service, crafting those reviews to answer questions for people who browse NapLab for free, who might never reach out for help, and who often will leave without ever even clicking an affiliate link. Doing that type of service well requires understanding what mattress shoppers need and delivering it to them in a language and a format that is accessible and accurate, even when the customers themselves might arrive at the site knowing very little about the topic of mattresses. Could you be educating your customers, not just about your specific products, but about the industry that you’re in? Could you unveil some of your industry’s secret language, be your customers’ advocate? NapLab treats their customers as informed purchasers in a way that the mattress industry deliberately clouds over with vague marketing language. I want to thank Derek for sharing his story with me.

Check out naplab.com if you need a mattress. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave me a review or a rating in iTunes, and I will love you for… well, not forever, but probably three to six months. And watch your podcast feed next month for the final episode of this series starring lawyer turned tech educator David Sparks, AKA MacSparky. See you next time. … I got distracted. There’s a big spider. This is a very Australian problem. There’s a big spider that’s just appeared on the wall. … Bringing people on… There’s another spider. Oh, my God. They’re suddenly appearing from everywhere. Obviously, something’s had a baby in here. Um, sorry, I’m gonna start that question again.